This Is Hands Down The Best Grocery Store Italian Dressing

Italian dressing is tangy and versatile, typically made with olive oil, vinegar, and aromatics like onion, garlic, oregano, and basil. While Italian dressing tastes better at restaurants, it is possible to snag a great-tasting bottle from your local grocery store to keep at home: Kroger's zesty Italian dressing. According to a Mashed ranking of 11 store-bought Italian dressing brands, this in-house store brand reigns supreme.

Whether poured over a garden salad, used as a dressing for pasta, or a marinade for chicken, it's always a good idea to have a bottle of Kroger Italian dressing in your pantry or fridge. In comparison to other grocery store Italian dressings, the Mashed taste tester hailed Kroger's moderately-priced dressing as "the best and brightest of the bunch, with all the spices showing up in proper proportions and the vinegar staying in its lane." 

Moreover, the texture of the dressing outperforms others. "The consistency provides a pleasant ooze from the pour spout as well, showing no signs of the gummy goo we found in other dressings," the taste tester praised. Other Italian dressings on the list include Newman's Own as the second-highest ranked, Olive Garden in the middle at number 5 out of 11, and Simple Truth Organic as the lowest-ranked store-bought Italian dressing. 

Kroger, one of the largest supermarket chains in the U.S., offers three different types of Italian dressing: creamy, fat-free, and Mashed's top choice: zesty. The zesty version is the closest to traditional Italian dressing and is made without artificial flavors. The zest comes from a blend of distilled vinegar and spices, including dried garlic, dried onion, and dried red bell peppers. It also has a subtle citrus flavor due to the addition of lemon juice concentrate. Kroger calls it an "instant flavor explosion" that works well as both a marinade and a dressing, and tastes equally great on garden salads and pasta salads. 

One shopper reviewed, "This is the best Italian dressing I have ever had. I have gotten more compliments than I can count when I take a recipe to a gathering using this dressing." At only $2.49 per 16-fluid-ounce bottle, it's hard to beat this affordable and great-tasting Italian dressing (for comparison, Kraft's zesty Italian dressing costs $3.49 for a bottle of the same size).  

Kroger, in collaboration with FoodHealth Company, gives the Kroger zesty Italian dressing a FoodHealth score of 42 out of 100, with 100 being the healthiest in terms of ingredient quality and nutrient density. Kraft's zesty Italian dressing receives just a slightly higher score of 46.